


Stormcrow

by NevillesGran



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Heartbreaking Children, Justified(? yeah probably) Betrayal, Klaus doesn't really appear until the end but he…looms throughout, Nightmares, of the Immobility and Stepford Smiling variety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 10:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5623579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a torrent, a flood, a tidal wave of everything—Anevka in the lab (in the dream and at home, with hidden bloodstains,) and his father and the Geisterdamen, the Order, the Storm King. He couldn’t stop. Mother and poisons and knives and Smoke Knights, wasps, hive engines and monsters in the sewer, in the library, in the family tree. </p><p>But Gil didn't shrink, didn't sneer, didn't pull away. He did something infinitely worse. He waited until Tarvek was finished (one arm around his shoulders, and for once Tarvek didn't fear someone else’s hand unseen at his back,) then said, sure and urgent: “You’ve got to tell the Baron.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stormcrow

**Author's Note:**

> "And with you come evils worse than before, as might be expected. Why should I welcome you, Gandalf Stormcrow?" -King Theoden, _The Two Towers_

It was a perfectly normal day in the Wulfenbach School. The students woke up, ate breakfast, went to class…The first lesson of the day for students ages six to ten was History, a terrifying lecture and question-and-answer round with Madame Von Pinn, and Gil spent half of it trying to draw Tarvek into a yawning contest from across the room. Tarvek politely covered his mouth and did his best to sit up straighter. _Gil_ could afford to show off how late they’d been up last night, unexpectedly trapped in a vent by two jägers who chose just the wrong patch of hallway to chat in. For over an hour. Tarvek could not.

But as the day wore on, he wore out, sleepier and sleepier until every movement felt like pushing through lead. His mind still worked fine, but it was all he could do at lunch to bring his fork to his mouth and back. Simple repetitive motions, like clockwork. Even speaking was too complicated, too slurred. Nobody else seemed to notice how jerky and slow he had become.

In Science, after lunch, Tarvek stopped moving completely. One arm was still outstretched with a bottle of vinegar for the basic (and acidic, ha) chemical explosives they were making today. Zulenna frowned as she plucked it from his grasp, but didn’t comment. (He wasn’t lab partners with Gil; of course he wasn’t. They were best friends at night but in the day there were Rules.)

Tarvek stood frozen like a broken toy soldier who’d lost his gun. He couldn’t even cry out. Everything inside him was still.

Then the door opened and Anevka walked in, shadowed by a guard. Of course—she wasn’t supposed to be here. But she was dressed right for Science class, in the simple white dress and dark purple coat she wore when she helped Father in the lab. It always hid the bloodstains. Her skin was pale against the collar.

“Excuse me,” she told the professor politely, with the sort of smile she used when she was acting kind. “I’m here to help my little brother. He needs maintenance.” She waved one elegantly gloved hand in Tarvek’s direction and he would have grinned if he could because she was holding the Key of the King, golden and grand, to open the lost Lightning Vault. That would get him moving again!

Professor Ditschus waved her on, already turning his attention to another student. Anevka strolled over to Tarvek’s bench. She didn’t bother to return Zulenna’s regal nod of recognition.

“My my,” she said, circling around behind him. “You’ve really let yourself run down this time.” She was only eleven but her _tsk_ was exactly like Mother’s. “Good thing I’m here to help.”

She moved front again as she spoke, so Tarvek could see her Kind smile, and notice too late that her skin was pale even for the end of a long winter at Sturmhalten. Ghost-pale. And the handle of her key wasn’t a royal _fleur de lis_ —it was the spiked head of a wasp.

But he still couldn’t shout for help, even when she reached around and stuck the key in his back, edging sideways for a better angle on winding it. The clockwork inside him began to whirr back to life and he shook feeling back into his limbs. It felt like bugs skittering under his skin.

“Say ‘thank you,’” Anevka instructed, one hand on the key in his back, and Tarvek replied “Thank you” instead of shouting that this was the _wrong key_ , couldn’t anyone _tell_ (couldn’t anyone _help_.)

Except Gil, who didn’t have enough sense of propriety to respect what was clearly a family affair. He walked over from his solo lab bench, where his vinegar and baking soda explosives were ruined because someone had bumped into him and spilled the base all over the floor, and demanded, “What’s wrong with him?”

“He just needed winding up,” Anevka said sweet as ice cream, and her face was Geister-white but her smile was all Anevka, not the Kind one anymore but Hunting. She pulled the wasp-head key out from between Tarvek’s ribs and showed it to Gil. “I can fix you, too, if you want. You’ll be _ever_ so much more efficient.”

She a mad, jagged edge to her voice now, an echo that sounded almost like Father speaking. Father loved efficiency.

Gil hesitated. Nobody else was paying attention, even the professor. Bugs skittering between his gears, Tarvek found himself saying, “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe.”

Anevka smiled at him, Pleased. Tarvek had smiles, too: he gave Gil a Reassuring one, and screamed and pounded his fists inside. He needed the _right key_ , the Key of the King, that could unlock _anything_ —even a broken clockwork prince. It was in _all_ the stories, and it was _his_ , and he couldn’t move because the ghost of the Geist key was still fixed between his ribs, ice cold tip at his heart even as it clenched at Gil biting his lip (looking at Tarvek with concern) and turning his back—

Tarvek woke with a shout locked in his throat, and for another moment he was terrified he _couldn’t_ let it out. Then a shaky hiss escaped his nostrils and he realized that he simply _mustn’t_ , which wasn’t all that different but much more true—he was in the dormitory on Castle Wulfenbach, there were students in the rooms on either side, and people would know he was scared and weak and in danger. Or _a_ danger.

Including Gil, who was asleep on Tarvek’s floor—with half the blankets off his bed, which was why Tarvek felt so cold. The ripples on his skin were nothing but goosebumps. He tried to calm his breathing, counting as the Smoke Masters taught. He tried to still his shivering as well, wrapping his arms around himself. It was just cold. Nothing but oncoming winter chill, which the engines weren’t making up for properly.

It was past 2:30 in the morning, according to the clock glowing faintly on the wall. They had only been asleep for a couple hours. The over-an-hour spent lying in an air duct listening to jägers debate the best way to make “bog soup” had been real.

Counting wasn’t helping, especially not with the shivering. Tarvek leaned over and filched the blanket off Gil’s back. It was his anyway, and Gil would just roll over and cocoon himself in the coverlet he was using as a mattress.

Except Tarvek fumbled the sleight-of-hand and Gil instead rolled over and looked directly up at him, eyes widening from sleep to naked concern so fast that Tarvek’s breath hitched again.

“I’m just cold,” he assured, and then nearly bit his tongue because it was the exact same voice he’d used to say, “it’s perfectly safe” in the dream.

Or maybe less believable, or maybe just as _un_ believable, because Gil bit his lip in concern and climbed up on the bed, pulling both blankets with him.

Words spilled unbidden from Tarvek’s lips again, but this time it was an unexpectedly fervid, “If you ever meet any of my family, _don’t trust them_.”

“Okay,” said Gil, and handed him a blanket. Tarvek wrapped it gratefully around his shoulders.

“What’s so bad about them?” asked Gil, draping the second blanket over both their laps.

It wasn’t the same way he’d asked “What’s wrong with him” in the dream—that had been just curious, almost petulant. This was deliberately careful, and soft in the dark room. But just as unashamedly impertinent. Maybe it was that last similarity, or the difference (both questions being so very _Gil_.) Maybe it was the fear of the dream, and the lingering goosebumps and hitching breath and tears leaked onto his cheeks. Maybe it was nearly getting caught earlier, when Gil had stuffed his fist in his mouth to keep from giggling at the bug soup recipes and Tarvek had done the same (Gil’s muffled squeaks were infectious) but wondered how bad the punishment would be if they were heard. Maybe it was the way Gil accepted his words at face value and offered him a blanket (Tarvek’s own, back) against the cold, that made Tarvek part want to curl close and share it again and part want to push him away until he was far enough to be _safe_. Until they both were. Attachment was a vulnerability. Tarvek had learned that on his mother’s knee.

Whatever the reason, when he opened his mouth, it wasn’t just spillage anymore: it was a torrent, a flood, a tidal wave of _everything_ —Anevka in the lab (in the dream and at home, with hidden bloodstains,) and his father and the Geisterdamen, the Order, the Storm King, Mother and poisons and knives and Smoke Knights, wasps, hive engines and monsters in the sewer, in the library, in the family tree. It was nothing like machinated clockwork; it was a jumble and a monsoon, with real tears, sobs and secrets all _screaming_ vulnerability and fear and everything awful in the world.

But not once did Gil sneer at him like he was weak, or back away like he was a monster. He scooted _closer_ on the thin dormitory bed, put an arm around Tarvek’s shoulders and acted as though he couldn’t feel them shaking even as he gripped tighter. For once, Tarvek didn’t fear someone else’s hand unseen at his back—he barely noticed; he was too busy hiccoughing tears onto Gil’s thin chest, or more accurately the blanket over it. There was no knife in that hand, nor wind-up key to stop him.

It felt like hours later that he trailed off, or days—still sniffling, on a list of assassination attempts the order of which he couldn’t remember. But glancing up at the clock said it was only now just past three. Gil still didn’t pull away, or shrink or sneer.

Instead, he did something infinitely worse. He waited to be sure Tarvek wasn’t going to start again, crying or babbling or both, and then he said, sure and urgent: “You’ve got to tell the Baron.”

Tarvek recoiled so fast that he nearly hit the wall at the head of the bed. He pressed against it for balance. Better that the hand _had_ held a knife. “NO!”

And, with less volume and more force, “ _No_.” Because there were still other students sleeping on the opposite sides of these walls, always others, could be eavesdropping.

(Could be sleeping peacefully rather than shouting and crying and arguing about the worst possible things.)

“Why not?” demanded Gil.

“He’ll kill me. _They’ll_ kill me.” Tarvek didn’t specify who ‘they’ were—he couldn’t; there were so many options. He didn’t need to.

“If you were helping him, the Baron would stop anyone who tried,” Gil argued. “And–”

He stopped, because he didn’t have a real argument for why the Baron wouldn’t kill Tarvek and they both knew it. This was Baron Wulfenbach they were talking about, and Tarvek was a hostage whose family was, by his own admission, in the worst sort of rebellion.

“You’re prob’ly more valuable alive,” Gil finished weakly. “For information and stuff.”

Tarvek scoffed, pressing his back against the wall. Arms clutched across his chest. “I don’t know that much.”

“But you could _help_.” Gil got up on his knees, hands out pleading. Offering. Proving themselves empty. “You could stop—you could _save_ everyone. Isn’t that what the real Storm King would do?”

It was a low blow, or maybe a high one, too high, forcing the recipient to look up as he slid down the wall to sit on his barely used pillow. Still shaking, just a little, in the hands pressed against his forearms. The right to the Lightning Throne had been barely a footnote in the crying ramble of a confession, maybe because it was the one thing he didn’t have nightmares about. Being killed for it, yes, but never the Throne or the Palace or the Royal Crown itself. Never the Muses. Except sometimes, when he ran until he reached them and thought himself safe, only to find they didn’t fit and couldn’t help. High blow for a highborn, from an orphan of unknown origin who’d heard more fairy tales in the last four months of friendship than in the first seven years of his life combined, because Tarvek had never had someone his own age who would listen to him and stay up late at night telling stories.

“It’s _my_ family,” he whispered hopelessly, thinking _I can’t be **that** much of a traitor_ and _they’re **my** job to deal with_ and _Gil **can’t** understand_.

But Gil did understand, or maybe he understood something else, or misunderstood altogether—the way a boy with no family might, in a world that often valued nothing else.

He settled back on his heels, on the bed in the dormitory in the dark. “Okay. I’m not– not making you.” At minimum he understood the feeling of secrets and fears buried so deep inside that they ached like sore muscles and burned like cinders, and only came out with tears.

Tarvek didn’t wipe his nose on his sleeve; he unwrapped himself just enough to reach over and pull a handkerchief out of the small drawer in his nightstand. “And you won’t tell anyone?” he demanded.

“I promise,” said Gil. Solemn. Those secrets were not lightly shared.

He added, “But you’ve got to promise me to think about it. Stopping them.”

Tarvek shook his head—not _no_ , just—“I don’t know–”

“We’ll find a way,” Gil said fiercely.

Nobody did ferocity like Gil, in joy or anger or pure, bright determination. It radiated like heat and Tarvek, were he old enough to think in metaphor, would have thought of dream-Anevka’s ice-white skin and blamed the drafty halls of Sturmhalten for how much he wanted to cling to Gil’s furnace.

“Fine,” he said, suddenly exhausted. “Can we go back to bed now, though?”

(It wasn’t a promise. He’d never said the words.)

(It was good enough for Gil.) “Okay.”

It was not the first time they’ve shared a bed, particularly not on nights when dreams turned dark. It was almost routine: “Escape route or wall at your back?” asked Gil, not teasing, and Tarvek considered a moment before replying, “Wall.” Together they remade the bed with all the sheets and blankets in proper order, then curled up under them side by side, Gil on the outside and Tarvek with his back to the wall.

(Sometimes he chose escape route, Gil at his back, but not tonight. Gil had no knife and Tarvek held his promise, too, but—he trusted Gil, he did; it was too late not to, now. Tarvek wished it wasn’t but a burning ache in his gut has uncoiled just slightly just to talk, and further when Gil hadn’t fled. And now Gil could be _prepared_ for…anything. But some nights Tarvek needed a wall at his back, solid and safe with no secret passages, just to be sure there wasn’t room to turn a key.)

(And it was okay that Gil, on the room-side of the bed, blocked off the best escape route, because Gil was safe, too, and fierce. He’d fight.)

It was, however, the first time that Tarvek fell asleep first. Normally it was Gil, who didn’t fear the pictures behind his eyes and never flinched to have another body too close. But tonight they’d been up late even before the nightmares, which do not count as rest anyway, and crying and tremors were hard work and emotional exhaustion took its own heavy toll. And then relief…Tarvek fell asleep more quickly than he could have imagined, one hand under his pillow (by his makeshift dagger) and the other resting on Gil’s warm, bony shoulder. And Gil…

One of the first things Gil remembered, really _remembered_ —not just hazy scraps of dreams he thought sometimes, with an ache like fire in his lungs, that he might have made up out of sheer desperation—was the day Castle Wulfenbach took off for the first time. And the only time, because once it was up it had never once touched down again. He’d heard an engineer once say that, with how much more it’d been built since then, if it ever came down they most likely wouldn’t be able to get it up again.

Gil didn’t think he could bear that thought, because the strongest part of the memory was of the blinding excitement he’d felt when the Castle lifted off—or rather, not blinding, because the best part was seeing everything grow smaller below. Gil would have snuck away to see it but for once Von Pinn had allowed the children front row seats to excitement, and the whole school was watching from a window bank on the second starboard deck. Gil’s nose was pressed to the glass from almost the second they arrived. First the rocks and lines of the building yard disappeared, and the men and women of the ground crews, then the trees and houses and even the shattered circle of stone that marked the old Castle Wulfenbach. Then the forest itself shrunk, and the mountains in the distance turned into game pieces.

It was the highest Gil had ever been. On the ground, even in the heart of the new Wulfenbach Empire in the budding school for orphans and hostages, even on bright, clear days there was fear and anger and suspicion. Sometimes people attacked, or _things_. One of Gil’s very earliest memories, that he thought might be a dream but didn’t _completely_ not make sense, was of watching Baron Wulfenbach fight off a monster like a bear mixed with a crocodile and half again as big as either. Gil thought he himself might have been crouching behind a rock while it happened, presumably one of the outcroppings near the old Castle, or wherever his parents were from. Had one of them made the crocobear? Had it turned on them, and then the Baron had stopped it? Gil wished with all his heart that he knew, but all he could ever remember was watching the Baron stab up at the thing’s roaring mouth, shouting in return.

There was no fear attached to the memory. Gil liked to tell ghost stories, but he had never felt scared of any monster he’d seen or heard of. Even wasps—he’d never seen one, not in real life, but the other kids told stories when Von Pinn wasn’t around. So did adults, if they didn’t notice he was there. Gil had been one of the Baron’s first orphan-hostage-students, supposed to be stuck in school at the center of the dynamic, exploding Empire as long as he could remember; he was _very good_ at not being noticed. The stories…were scary. The stories were why everyone was scared and angry and suspicious all the time. And sometimes sad. Gil was _one_ of the first orphans, and only the _first_. Not all of them stayed, but for a while he tried to talk to them before they learned the rules about families. Tarvek was not the first person whom he’d held while they cried about their family.

But from the sky, the forests and fields and mountains spread out like drawings on a map, like pictures in a storybook - the good kind, where the good guys won and the villains and monsters were always defeated. The broken castle faded into the ground and scorched sites of battle and burnt hive engines became nothing but pieces of the patchwork. Of the Empire, of Europa. And above it all the sky spread out as perfect and cloudless blue as anyone could have asked for, as boundless and empty and _free_. Gil had felt like if the world had shrunk then he must have grown bigger, two meters at least, to fill it all.

Even Baron Wulfenbach had paused to look out the window, when he came striding by on his way to look over the aft engines. He wasn’t in his big coat that day, hardly dressed majestically at all, really—this was a Great Day but it was an _engineering_ day, and he wasn’t even wearing a lab coat, just a pair of old brown overalls and an oil-stained workman’s shirt. But he was the Baron, two meters taller as the default, and he strode through his new Castle like a storm just barely fitting into human shape.

Yet he paused to look out the window, and then down at Gil (whose nose and fingers were leaving prints on the glass), and said, “Good, isn’t it?” With a slight smile. Not even a mad smile, just…pleased. Happy. Like he was as delighted as Gil to be off the ground.

That was the only part of the memory Gil thought he might have imagined, because he’d never in his life seen or heard of anything else that suggested Baron Wulfenbach might be a real human being. Rather than, say, a force of nature.

It wasn’t a choice at all, really. Not for a second. Even when he’d promised.

Gil turned slowly onto his back, letting Tarvek’s hand slip gently from his shoulder to the sheets. It curled around them automatically, like he needed something to hold onto. Gil smothered a stab of guilt. He knew Tarvek didn’t like waking up with people missing or present where they had once been the opposite. He hid it, but it made him nervous.

Gil guessed he knew more of why, now.

He slid sideways out from under the blankets, careful not to disturb his friend further, nor make a sound. The ground—the deck—thrummed slightly beneath his feet, like it always did. He let himself just stand and enjoy it for a moment, and make sure that Tarvek was really still asleep, and that he, Gil, was _really_ going to do this. Then he tiptoed out of the room and down the hall towards where he calculated Madame Von Pinn would be making her rounds.

“Master Gilgamesh!” she snapped the second she saw him—literally snapped, with metal teeth, and despite himself Gil flinched. Von Pinn was _scary_ when she got mad. “You ought to be in _bed_.”

Then she saw him properly: his sleep-tousled hair, his hands clenched in nervous fists, his eyes sad and hard and scared-wide all at once. That he was running towards her rather than away. She knelt and softened her voice, still raspy (with rage, always, at everything she couldn’t say) but trying to be kind. Looking past him for a pursuer. “What is wrong, child?”

Gil bunched his fists even tighter, nails cutting into his palms. “I- I need to talk to the Baron. Right now. It’s an emergency.”

“ _What?_ ” Every muscle in her body went taut.

He all but physically scrambled backwards. “Not an _emergency_ emergency. I mean, important. Really important. It’s–” He swallowed. “I–”

It wasn’t in Gil’s nature to betray a confidence, nor break a promise, especially not to the only friend he’d ever had. He wasn’t sure he could do it twice.

“Please,” he said instead, desperately. “I found a conspiracy, a _real_ one, against the whole Empire. A really bad one. _Please_.”

Madame Von Pinn (as she was now called) stood, and looked the boy over. _Her_ boy, she thought privately, given to her charge in utmost confidence—ignorant though he was to the fact. She has never been sure of that decision, but it was not hers to make. If anyone has the right…

And he was not foolish, her boy. He did not flinch at shadows or aim death rays at clouds.

“Very well,” she said, and picked him up (it was faster, and no one would question them) and strode out of the school area. Her belief that something was truly wrong was affirmed when he didn’t squall at the indignity.

Gil didn’t squall (though he _was_ too big to be carried.) He looked. He’d been out of the school this late at night before, more times than he could count, but never casually in the hallways where there were lights on and the general murmur of people bustling about. Fewer of both at this hour, mostly essential crew and maintenance staff, but still: it was very different than the view he usually got, crawling through the air ducts or the spaces between decks.

He didn’t have time to appreciate it, because he was too busy digging his nails into his palms and thinking that the pain was a good distraction, or maybe substitute, for the all-new boiling fear that he was making an irrevocable error that would lose him the only friend he might ever make, _ever_.

But it was _right_. Right? Any tech of the Other was supposed to go to the Baron, to study and destroy; that was one of the fundamental rules of the Empire. Because the Other was _evil_ , and that much Gil knew in his bones. And Tarvek’s family was, by all accounts, little better. (By Tarvek’s account, and the record of every time he flinched when people drew too close too fast, and always hesitated before jumping between rafters, and every nightmare Gil knew he had.) Tarvek was just too _scared_ to do anything, so Gil had to be the brave one, the hero, and risk losing everything—because that was what heroes _did_ , in all the stories. Then maybe, once the Baron fixed everything…

(The idea that the Baron might _not_ fix everything did not for a moment cross Gil’s mind. He was _the Baron_. He used to fight with the Heterodyne Boys, and they stopped the Other the first time, so of _course_ he would finish the job. He was singlehandedly responsible for, or at least in absolute charge of, everything Gil knew in the world, save for a few hazy shreds of probably-(desperately hopefully _not_ )-just-dreams. (Someone had held him…) And perhaps the basic laws of physical science. But he could _break_ those, because he was a Spark and _Baron Wulfenbach_.)

The only question was whether the Baron would win in just the _right_ way, so Gil could be the sort of hero who saved the day (helped save the day, really; the Baron and the jägers and the Fleet would obviously do the real saving) without losing everything. Or _anything_. He had so very little to lose.

Too soon, Gil stood in the Baron’s office and looked up at him over a desk nearly as tall as Gil himself. Madame Von Pinn stood guard by the door, which was closed. It was nearly 0400 hours but the Baron was still dressed for the day, or maybe already dressed for the next day, in a dark blue vest and crisp white shirt and gold Wulfenbach pin on his high collar, just brushed by his madboy-loose hair. An imposing grey coat draped over the back of his chair. Gil stood in an off-white nightshirt (the hem of which he was trying not to twist in his hands, having already strictly told himself to stop making half-moon marks all over his palms) and navy pajama bottoms rolled up at the ankles. They dragged a little, but the cuffs were useful for storing things like small snacks and lockpicks.

“Well?” thundered the Baron. His hands were clasped on the desk, his eyes storm-dark and terrifyingly intent as he leaned forward to get a better look at his stormcrow student.

Gil twisted his hem nervously under that gaze and burst out, “It’s _not_ Tarvek’s fault, okay? He told _me_ and that should count. _Please_ let that count. It’s his family, and they’re _awful_ …”

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in reading the rough draft of this, which is missing about the first third of it, check out http://tanoraqui.tumblr.com/post/136324700352/edit-im-definitely-going-to-edit-this-and-post. 
> 
> Fun background notes: Those jägers smelled the boys from like a corridor away and were totally intentionally trapping them in the hope Madame Von Pinn would come get them. Klaus was smiling more at Gil's manifest delight than at the view, and walked away kicking himself for showing a particular interest in Gil. I'm not sure how it gets there but I'm like 80% certain this AU ends with, or at least includes, Klaus and 8yo Gil having an argument in public, like, a FULL room of people, probably about Tarvek, and Gil in response to something is like "Why?" (for about the tenth time) and Klaus just roars "BECAUSE YOU'RE MY SON." And then. Remembers. Everyone else. _Staring in silence._


End file.
